Max Mixed Cuisine

Discovery rather than instruction. There is no recipe to follow: you combine ingredients and find out what happens, and the game keeps a record of what worked so a session builds a list rather than repeating one.

Bad combinations are part of the design and they have consequences — some produce something inedible and set you back, which gives the experimenting a real cost and stops it becoming a matter of tapping everything against everything.

It is closer to a puzzle game than to a kitchen, and it suits players who like being given a system rather than a sequence. The chef character provides reactions that hint at whether you are near something workable.

1. Pick an ingredient to start from.
2. Combine it with another and watch the result.
3. Keep the combinations that work.
4. Build up the recipe list without wasting good ingredients.

Change one ingredient at a time. Swapping two at once means you learn nothing from a failure, and failures cost ingredients you may not get back.